It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it's a squirrel?

Today’s topic is one of those that makes me smile. Say these two little words to me, and I guarantee you that a silly grin will pop to my face. I don’t know why, exactly – it’s just irresistible to me. Want to know what the 2 words are?

Flying squirrels.

I find something irresistibly funny about the idea of squirrels flying loftily through the air. Squirrels! Those little, bushy-tailed sneaks who will do just about anything to get into a bird feeder, who sit and chirp just outside the patio door (tantalizingly out of reach of our cats), who like to play chicken and run across the road right in front of my car, and who have been brazen enough to steal entire grilled cheese sandwiches from picnic tables when my attention has turned. (That’s a true story, by the way.) I guess I find it funny that an animal like that can fly gracefully and elegantly through the sky.

Actually, we must get something straight. Flying squirrels can’t actually fly – they glide. They have a large, loose flap of skin that stretches between their front and back legs. When they jump from a tall tree, this skin stretches out, forming a shape much like a kite. Using the lift provided from these “wings” and their tails as rudders, the squirrels can glide up to 150 feet through the air to land on another tree trunk. The only true flying mammals in the world belong to the order Chiroptera, to which bats belong. Flying squirrels belong to the order Rodentia (yes, they are rodents), the family Sciuridae (meaning squirrel), and the subfamily Pteromyinae (meaning flying squirrels). There are two major subfamilies of flying squirrels – Northern and Southern. These differ in their geographic distribution, forest preference, and subtly in their appearance – for example, Northern flying squirrels tend to be larger than Southern ones.

While the flying squirrel is possibly the most well known mammalian glider, there are other ones, as well. There are several species of gliding possums, including 11 belonging to the family Petauridae. These guys have great names, including the Great-Tailed Triok, Tate’s Triok, Leadbeater’s Possum, the Biak Glider, and the Sugar Glider. There is another species of flying squirrel called the scaly-tailed flying squirrel (an African rodent that’s not actually related to squirrels at all, it just looks like them). There are also 2 species of flying colugos, or lemurs. It’s not a bad list, considering that mammals really do not have the right body shape or structure for flight at all!

What prompted my decision to write about flying squirrels? I came across an article recently in National Geographic about efforts to design a jumpsuit that will allow humans to skydive without a parachute – instead, they’ll glide to safety in the same way a flying squirrel does. It’s called a wingsuit. Actually, wingsuits do currently exist; they have large fabric panels between the arms and legs of the suit that allow the skydiver to maneuver in freefall. However, the current generation of wingsuits are not advanced enough to allow the entire flight to be parachute-free – you still need that for the actual landing. That’s because while the gliding action of the wingsuit slows your vertical speed down dramatically, it translates it into horizontal speed – upwards of 90 miles an hour. That’s plenty of speed to do some damage to your body! Designers are trying to create a wingsuit that will allow the skydiver to manipulate their “wings” at the last minute before landing, slowing their horizontal speed.

Now, the jury’s still out as to whether or not this will actually work. I think we can be certain of one thing, though. Nature still has mankind beat when it comes to creative ways to handle complex problems. What we will only be able to do with extreme effort, these squirrelly little rodents have been doing effortlessly for years. Kind of humbling, don’t you think?